Instagram just introduced one of its most significant changes in recent memory — landscape and portrait modes for photos and videos. In addition to the traditional square photos, Instagram now natively allows the ability to post media in portrait and landscape orientations. This means you can post your photos and videos as they were originally shot.

No more cropping videos that you shot in widescreen, or selfies you took in portrait mode. According to the company, nearly one in five photos or videos people post aren’t in the square format. With the help of third-party apps Instagram users have been able to accomplish posting media without cropping it.

With today’s update, it sounds like those third-party apps are destined to become obsolete. The company admits, “we know that it hasn’t been easy to share this type of content on Instagram”, but now that problem has been fixed. Here’s how it works: Choose a photo or video Tap the brand new format icon on the bottom left to adjust the orientation. Choose your filters, and so on. Once shared, the full-sized versions of your media in landscape and portrait format will appear in a much more natural way than it would have before with a third-party app.

On your profile screen the photo grid will remain square — any media that’s not natively square will appear as a center-cropped square. In addition, all filters can now be used for all types of media. There’s no longer filters just for photos and filters just for videos. Those are two major changes in one day that are sure to change the landscape (pun intended) of Instagram for the foreseeable future. Widescreen video opens up a lot of new opportunities.

Even when using third-party apps in the past, rendering and uploading widescreen video was a terribly tiresome process. Now it sounds like it will be just like uploading any other video. With this update you can check ‘landscape/portrait mode’ off the list of most wanted Instagram features. Next, it would likely please a lot of people if the app offered a native re-gram feature. Editorial Credit: tulpahn / Shutterstock.com